Valentine's day weekend

Zach and I decided to take a trip down to Colorado Springs for Valentine's day this year. We wanted to go to Glenwood Springs, but they seemed all booked up already. But the Springs was super fun too :) We drove down on Friday and had dinner at a brewery that was supposed to be good, and was conveniently right across the street from our hotel. While we were there the couple at the table next to us got engaged, they were super loud about it and we got front row seats.

On Saturday morning we had the best breakfast ever at the hotel's fancy restaurant, for only $6, pretty good deal.

View from our window, almost the top floor

Then we went to Garden of the Gods, apparently it was mountain goat day, so Smokey Bear was there.

me and a big rock

Zach likes to deliberately disobey signs

Stay on the path Zach

Then we went to the Cheyenne Zoo, and spent forever there :) We learned lots of things, like giraffes have really gross tongues, moose like buckets on their heads, wolfs are just ugly dogs, hippos are the grossest eaters ever, and if a zebra, horse, and giraffe had a baby it would look like this:

Hello Okapi

fake giraffe


real giraffe!!

cutest ever


grossest ever

Sweethearts how I miss you

I'm writing this in case you have been searching for Necco Sweathearts this past Valentine's day, could you only find ones with blue and neon colors? Me too. Because Necco decided that the classic candy that's been around since forever should instead have the following flavors:

dishsoap, baby powder, lipstick, and evil.

I found a pretty great blog about it here : http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/item/sweethearts_2010/

"it's like if Coke decided to only make Cherry Coke" - Zach

Curly Girl Method, Simplified!

I'd heard a lot about the "Curly Girl Method" but until now I have been reluctant to try it.  Several things about it were a little too weird for me, like not shampooing your hair (I like shampoo!), not combing after your shower, and not using regular towels. 
Well last week I was so frustrated with my hair (mostly this horrible haircut) and Colorado's extremely dry climate, that I decided to give the Curly Girl Method a try.  And so far it's not nearly as gross as I thought it would be, my hair today feels cleaner (and healthier) than it has in a long long time. 
The method really consists of 6 things:
1. Use a sulfate free shampoo.   It won't lather like a normal shampoo, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  The Deva Care Lo Poo is really nice, and it smells like orange sherbert.

2.  Comb through conditioner in the shower.

3. Don't use a normal terry cloth towel to dry your hair, use a t-shirt or microfiber towel.

4. This was the tricky part to me.  If you cut out sulfates from your shampoo, then you also have to cut out silocones from your hair products, because without the sulfates they will just build up on your hair because they're not water soluable.  I thought the only ones without silicones would be expensive organic products, but the super cheap drugstore products like V05 and Suave work too (not all of them, but a lot).

5. Plopping, this is what plopping looks like:

and this is why Zach laughs at me every morning, but it works so well!

6. Diffuse, but don't dry your hair all the way (I really hate having wet hair, so I probably dry it too much but whatever)

The result? I feel like I have new hair! Which is creepy, like someone else's hair is on my head.  But it feels so much better than it did before, so I guess figuring all this out was worth it.